Better living through empiricism

Rights

October 04, 2014

We are likely now approaching the end-game of this round of protests in Hong Kong. The latest news involved attacks by thugs on the protestors, which should be highly reminiscent for those that followed the protests in Tahrir Square. As Daniel Davies then vulgarly summarized: "When it becomes a numbers game, there is only one thing that can save you. And that is, a reactionary citizens' militia, to combat the revolutionary citizens' militia. Former socialist republics always used to be fond of buses full of coal miners from way out the back of beyond, but the Iranian basijs are the same sort of thing. Basically, what you need is a large population who are a few rungs up from the bottom of society, who aren't interested in freedom and who hate young people. In other words, a#$%*@s." Obviously, the larger point about the military not having the numbers does not apply to Hong Kong, but as colleague John Schaus notes, the PRC, sensibly, knows that sending in the PLA will be costly and so they prefer other means.

Dan Levin of the New York Times gives a fascinating history on the triads that are the foot soldiers in the attacks. "According to Sharon Kwok and T. Wing Lo, experts on the city’s criminal underworld at City University of Hong Kong, the triads were originally a patriotic organization founded in the 17th century to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. They eventually contributed to the 1911 revolution, which saw the last emperor replaced by the Republic of China. Patriotism soon fell by the wayside, however." The triads worked with occupying Japanese forces and In 1993, just four years before Britain returned Hong Kong to Beijing’s control, China’s then-minister of public security, Tao Siju, said at a news conference that China was willing to work with triads if they were “patriotic and concerned with the stability and prosperity of Hong Kong.”

The People's Republic of China also sometimes has allies against democracy that wear far nicer suits. Back in July the big local branches of the four accounting firms took out an ad against Occupy Central (via Henry of Crooked Timber):

The big four global accounting companies have taken out press advertisements in Hong Kong stating they are “opposed” to the territory’s democracy movement, warning that their multinational clients may quit the city if activists carry out threats to disrupt business with street protests. In an unusual joint statement published in three Chinese-language newspapers on Friday, the Hong Kong entities of EY, KPMG, Deloitte and PwC said the Occupy Central movement, which is calling for electoral reform in the former British colony, posed a threat to the territory’s rule of law.

By Monday, another advert appeared in Hong Kong’s Apple Daily newspaper, purportedly placed by employees of the Big Four, which admonished the firms’ bosses. In white characters against a black background, the employees wrote: “hey boss, your statement doesn’t represent us”—a double entendre in Cantonese, as “hey boss” is also a mild vulgarity expressing angered disbelief.

Instead, for those seeking civil society approaches, I'd say focus on the long game and let U.S. and multinational companies know that collaboration in antidemocratic efforts, in China or elsewhere, will cause them problems in their other markets. As Henry notes:

Of course, this isn’t the first shameful decision made by Western companies looking to build business in China – see Bloomberg’s squashing of a story on corruption among family members of senior Chinese leaders, or, for that matter, Rupert Murdoch’s instruction to Harper-Collins not to publish Chris Patten’s memoirs. But this goes substantially further than quiet acquiescence, to public and active opposition to the pro-democracy movement, and the issuing of threats intended to stifle it. It would be nice to see Ernst-Young, KPMG, Deloitte and Price-Waterhouse Cooper put on the spot by US politicians and journalists about their Hong Kong offices’ unrepudiated public statements opposing pro-democracy protestors.

This was a particularly big deal for technology companies in the aughts. The price they pay for not playing ball with the PRC can be rather large, as recently demonstrated by censorship this summer. I have no problem believing that the ad in the Apple was taken out by employees of the accounting firms and that there are people at most multinational firms active in China that would prefer a first do no harm approach. Pressure from the outside, between crises, can strengthen their hands.

September 16, 2014

While my wife and mother were cooling their heels at the the closed Modern Transportation Museum, I was at a different station, searching for the Osaka Human Rights Museum. It was a bit of a walk from the station, made longer by my misreading of the map. I ultimately gave in and turned on data roaming to pull down some digital navigation assistance. Thankfully for you, dear reader, I'm not subjecting you to another post (primarily) about wars, past or present. This museum is primarily focused on the human rights situation in modern Japan and many of the displays, including AIDS quilts and rainbow flags, were instantly recognizable even though the displays were in Japanese.

The first zone of the single floor of exhibits was entitled Shining Light. This section could be a bit sign-heavy, but there were pictures to help and I got both an English audio guide and a printed notebook with translations to help. The displays were also rich in photographs and pictures taking on issues of gender discrimination, LGBTQ rights, the rights of the disabled, and even a significant section on children. My comprehension level wasn't quite high enough to grasp how some of the displays might have been different than their equivalent in the United States, although I know that the struggle for gender equality in Japan is very much ongoing.

I dwelled the longest in the second zone, Living Together/Creating Society which focused on ethnic minority groups within Japan as well as other communities facing human rights issues, often for health or environmental reasons. Displays included rich coverage of Korean and Chinese immigrants, the Ainu people, and native Okinawans. In the Korean section, I found particularly affecting a set of captioned home videos on the post-War Korean community in Japan including a celebration in Kyoto of the liberation of the peninsula on the first anniversary of Victory in Japan day. The section on the Ainu and the Okinawans both focused on their living culture, although of course in the latter case the U.S. military base adds a whole different set of issues to the discussion.

One piece that did particular catch my eyes was a flag that was both instantly recognizable and unfamiliar. To the left is a was the banner of a Christian group in Japan, a red crown of thorns on a black field. The museum really did do an admirable job getting at the history of a range of groups and the last section on Dreams/The Future as well as the staffers in the front office and bookstore all left me feeling good about the Japanese activist community.

I left a bit before closing, rushing back to the loop train to try to get a half hour in at the Modern Transportation Museum, which unbeknownst to me had been closed this whole time. I somehow managed to miss Kate and Mom on the platform and wandered around the building once before running into them. Happily, we did have one fond train story coming out of that particular excursion. At the transfer station on the way to meet up with Moti and Francis we spied the poster on the right, celebrating the 110th anniversary of Osaka's transit system. One of the booth attendants saw us doing that and rushed up, but gladly this was not a fusspot of the paranoid American-style. Instead, the gentleman had just recognized us as transit geeks and gave us three post card copies of the poster to send out as we wished. That encounter brightened our day and took some of the sting out of the missed connections at the museum.

Having gone to grad school during the Iraq War and having followed humanitarian interventions before that, there’s a range of reasons that taking a para-military approach runs into trouble. If you’re interested in reading more about grappling with the line between military and policing and various attempts to effectively straddle it, check out Where is the Lone Ranger When We Need Him? by Robert M. Perito for the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Military and paramilitary approaches can be escalatory

James Gerrond notes “In the USAF, we did crowd control and riot training every year. Lesson 1: Your mere presence has the potential to escalate the situation.” This is fairly easy to understand on a human level. Being around people with weapons out, particularly if you don’t trust them, is just stressful. That can even extend to body armor, which is why many NGOs intentionally eschew it even in conflict zones. Worse, if heavy-handed tactics are used in response to genuine provocation or simply without justification, those already protesting suddenly have more cause. Ferguson does not have a notably higher violent crime rate than the nation as a whole. This entire thing was quite avoidable.

Policing is challenging and political

Military force is hardly apolitical, but in the strict sense of the term national defense and a focus on external enemies means that the military isn’t responsible for enforcing the domestic social order, be it good or ill. However, when keeping the peace, particularly in reference to a protest, police can’t avoid confronting the fissures and fault lines in society. This of course is especially true when they represent the target of the protest. Most any occupying military will want to rely to the extent possible on local police forces, but those forces will often have political problems of their own if the country has notable existing fault lines.

Legitimacy matters

The question of whether people trust the those patrolling the streets is both squishy and critical. CSIS’s Bob Lamb put out a report this summer on assessing legitimacy that does a good job of nailing down the concept and what it provides:

Legitimacy is a worthiness of support (or, in some contexts, of loyalty or imitation), and illegitimacy is a worthiness of opposition. Legitimacy sustains and illegitimacy impedes. In the short term, legitimacy also induces compliance with demands and requests and encourages supportive participation and public action, while illegitimacy induces opposition.

The Ferguson Police Department’s legitimacy was already tarnished by the shooting of Michael Brown and was further squandered through their choice of tactics. Most everyone is now hoping that the Governor Nixon’s deployment of the State Highway Patrol will change that dynamic not because they know the territory better or they’re more trained in crowd control, but because they’re avoiding escalation and are trusted in a way that the local police no longer are.

We’ll know soon enough if that works, but I think there’s a good chance it will. The most successful form of foreign intervention, as Rolan Paris elaborates, are peacekeeping operations. The biggest advantage peacekeepers have is legitimacy. They are coming into a situation with the agreement of all major parties to a conflict.

Last night’s police response in Ferguson was certainly an example of ineffective militarization, but it’s important to remember all the advantages they had. They lived there, they knew the territory, they spoke the language. It’s that much harder for even far better-trained outsiders to play that role. Peacekeeping shows that it can be done, but I suspect that a key enabler of success is having a measure of legitimacy from the start. Meanwhile, I’m gratified that there appears to be a widespread realization that our police forces shouldn’t try to act like occupying forces: they aren’t good at it, and it makes their job harder in the first place.

July 12, 2014

Content warning: The main museum gets most directly into the consequences of the bombing of Hiroshima, beyond even what is shown in the East building.

Walking through corridors showing the damage done to Hiroshima to property and to people, I certainly felt a moral imperative that these weapons never be used again. However, how is it that nuclear weapons have only been used twice in battle? I believe deterrence and mutually assured destruction is part of the story, but a key related concept is what Thomas Schelling calls the nuclear taboo. At first the escalation to nuclear weapons was seen as more of a continuation of existing policy than a radical break during WWII, and President Eisenhower made nuclear first use a policy in the event of a conventional Soviet invasion of Europe. However, by 1964 President Johnson declared “Make no mistake, there is no such thing as a conventional nuclear weapon. For 19 peril-filled years no nation has loosed the atom against another. To do so now is a political decision of the highest order.” This reflected earlier decisions not to deploy them in Korea and subsequent avoidance by the U.S. in Vietnam, by Israel against Egypt in 1973, and by the Soviets in Afghanistan. Nina Tattenwald discusses the origin of the taboo (summary by Patrick Lam) and the main building passionately and decisively makes the case that this taboo must be maintained whether you believe in full abolition or that they’ve contributed to the decline in great power war.

The displays (excerpted online) covered the multitude of ways that nuclear weapons can visit destruction upon cities: the rays of heat, the blast itself, the conflagration of flammable materials, and of course the radiation. The picture on the left shows a portion of the facade of a bank where someone was sitting at 8:15 that morning, likely waiting for it to open. Given the location, the person died on the spot, the stone around them was blasted white while the steps underneath them left the remnant of their “shadow” in the middle of the picture.

The mangled remains of the city, stone, wood, and steel filled many of the displays showing the widespread extent of the damage from a single nuclear bomb with a small yield by today’s standards. The museum did its best to mark where each piece came from within the blast zone. The details filled out the almost incomprehensible damage shown in the photographs and the detailed model on the right. One piece I don’t have the heart to include in the display was the shredded remnants of the school uniforms of children who died in the bombing or the days thereafter (let alone the photographs of the burned bodies directly afflicted). Some had been evacuated to the country but others were conscripted to create firebreaks and in anticipation of conventional bombing.

Death and devastation can come in many forms. As I’ve earlier mentioned, more people died from a single raid in the firebombing of Tokyo; however, that raid involved 334 B-29s with 279 dropping bombs. By comparison, the Enola Gay flew with only two other planes, suggesting a terrible potential to scale that was achieved by both sides in the Cold War. This is also where the radiation comes in, as experienced by many of the hibakusha, the survivors of the atomic bombs. Sadako Sasaki, who helped inspire the Children’s War Memorial, had been two at the time of the bombing but died years later of leukemia despite having been quite healthy in the interim. The picture on the right are some of the cranes she folded; you may have read or heard of her story when you were a child.

The remainder of the museum focused on the stories of survivors, the rescue and recovery efforts, and even pictures drawn by those who were there. This was complemented by prayers and wishes for peace from around the world and a view out to the rest of the park. Based on the wikipedia page, one million people visit the museum a year. I hope, in addition to whatever else we do to make this a better world, we all work to keep this taboo from fading.

July 10, 2014

Some years ago, in my home town of Washington, D.C., the Air and Space Museum had an exhibit about the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. I believe I went through it, but I may just be conflating pictures of the plane with past trips to the museum in my ever fallible memory. Regardless, that exhibit unsuccessfully sought to avoid controversy by focusing on the technical aspects and avoiding politics and context. Worse yet are museums that actively distort the past for propagandistic purposes. By comparison, the Peace Museum takes an extremely challenging topic and addresses it in a forthright and informative matter.

The initial section gives the history of Hiroshima leading into the Second World War. Hiroshima was a garrison city a staging area for troops in various wars, one of the centers for emigrants from annexed Korea, and an industrial town with a significant reliance on mobilized students and forced labor. The panel on the right discusses the invasion of China: “Early in the War with China, the Japanese Army occupied many Chinese cities. In December 1937, it took the capital city, then called Nanking. The occupation of this important city cheered the Japanese people, who considered the war in China a holy crusade. Hiroshima’s residents celebrated with a lantern parade. In Nanking, however, Chinese people were being massacred by the Japanese army.” It goes on to briefly discuss varied estimates of the death toll. Wartime atrocities are not the subject of the museum - for that there is the Kyoto Museum for World Peace - but it squarely addresses the context of the bombing before making the hard case against it.

After reviewing the history, the museum proceeds to the actual attack. There are any number of artifacts, although the greater detail is held for the second building and a future post. On your left is a pocket watch donated by Akito Kawagoe, stopped at the exact moment of the bombing. The discussion of the decisions of the U.S. government does not rely on hyperbole. Instead it presents key memos and minutes from the debates, showing various competing views. As is somewhat widely known, the old capital Kyoto was also considered as a possible target. However, its selection was vehemently opposed by Japan experts within the U.S. government as a sacrilege which would destroy any hope of future peace with Japan. The museum did not specifically argue that there was a clear course that would have achieved peace without the use of the bomb, but did highlight that possible concessions, such as allowing the continuation of the imperial system as the occupying forces did anyways, were not deeply explored before the attack.

The destruction of the bombing was shown in multiple forms, including the two models above. One related point mentioned by the museum, but not an area of primary focus, was that the firebombing of Tokyo and not the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki is widely cited as the source of the largest casualty count from a single air raid. The horrifying specter of nuclear war is not just the enormity of the individual bombings, but that the threat can scale up in a way that more air force-intensive operations could not. This relative continuity in death toll is perhaps one of the reasons why the specific morality of the atomic bomb was not as hotly debated. In many ways it was a continuation of existing policy by other means. However, the questions raised there require research beyond the scope of this post.

April 06, 2013

Ben Gurion Airport has a lovely, compact design: there's a central hub with a multistory fountain, an upper level for incoming flights, a lower level for departures, and a massive pair of ramps that flips incoming and outgoing as you enter/exit. Of course, depending on your demographics and/or stamps in your passport form such places as Egypt or Afghanistan, you'll probably be spending an hour waiting in a small partitioned off section of the customs area. As waiting rooms go, that area is pretty drab if not featureless: there's a television and few vending machines. As you'd probably expect, I was a standout and most of the people in that area likely had some sort of Arabic ancestry.

The security interview process for me was about what you'd expect. It took less than fifteen minutes, albeit with of a total wait of about an hour. The questions were varied but nothing that you wouldn't see on a U.S. security clearance plus a more detailed version of the usual customs question. I answered in my usual information dump style and my questioner seemed professional and made the connection to other people traveling for Guy's funeral. They also ended up not stamping my passport without my even requesting it, which will make my life easier should I travel to a few other countries in the future. A friend of mine wasn't so lucky and ended up wasting three hours, two interviews, and getting oddly insistent questions about Guy's cell phone number.

I hadn't actually discussed Israeli airport security much with Guy. That said, his general philosophy often involved using technology to mitigate the costs of conflict. I've got to imagine that were he designing the system, there would probably be some displays with estimated wait times and the like. He'd have made sure that travelers that get detained for an hour at least get accurate information on which baggage carrousel their luggage could be found at. Admittedly, the amount of time I wasted there was largely my fault; once I saw the length of the lost and found lines (picking the wrong one didn't help) I should have searched the rest of the terminal immediately. Lesson learned.

On the whole, I think the interview process does probably result in a greater marginal increase in security than much of the security theater in the U.S. Also, it makes a lot more sense as a first step than strip searches and the like. However, let's be straight for a minute. The idea that we need more selective security is typically a euphemism for just questioning Muslims in greater detail while leaving the rest of the population alone. I'm an international relations professional; if that gets me extra screening I've got no objection, but I'd feel differently if I had to wait an hour every time I traveled because of my ancestry. So while my interview experience (and not my friend's) might be a reasonable example and TSA security theater needs to be toned down, I wouldn't support moving the U.S. towards the Israeli model. That said, I have heard horror stories for foreign friends coming in through U.S. customs, so I don't consider our system an exemplar.

February 18, 2013

"You know what a president actually is?" he asked. "An unreliable narrator." "Really." She sensed a speech coming. "He's the one who tells us how it is, right? And we fall for it, we read along with his story and let him construct the reality around us. We want to be entertained, soothed. Until one day, we hit that certain chapter, right, an suddenly we see the light and realize, Holy s***, we've been lied to the whole time. Reality ain't like that all. His story was bulls***.But by then, it's too late. We've all been suckered, and we just have to follow along with his little plot."

The Revisionists is a quintessential D.C. novel, from the setting to the fact that whole acts' titles refer to jargon such as 'green badges' in reference to contractors. This fact may be remarkable, given the sci-fi framing of a story about a man sent back in time to ensure that the right calamities happen in order to ensure his future. However, as Moti notes in his review, they don't really clash. I suppose D.C. takes all sorts from all places, so why should the future be any different?

The book tells the story of four characters, the aforementioned time traveler, an Indonesian maid, a lawyer who recently lost her brother in the wars, and a former spook now working for the aforementioned contractors. The first act, before they really become enmeshed in one another's stories, is somewhat slow going, leavened by the sci-fi storyline. Once they start interacting and complicating one another's lives by trying to do the right thing in a compromised way, the story kicks into gear. The characters all face alienation and come to realize that they aren't quite as clever as they think they are, but the book doesn't counsel despair so much as the realization that hard choices are not so easily dodged.

I think a real strength of the book is that it actually grapples with last decade as lived by many middle-class D.C. types. This isn't a war novel so much as a homefront novel, as the lawyer's loss of her brother draws her into becoming a whistleblower and the former intelligence agent recounts the story of how he was drawn into the national security apparatus because he found the world common to many literary novels to be unreal. This is a world of moderates making questionable decisions and leftists that are so far out of the system to be ineffective, with little middle ground. While the prose didn't always have me enraptured, I enjoyed the match between the conflicting viewpoints and think the story managed to be unblinking without being merely cynical.

I liked the ending more than Moti, although we both interpret a key ambiguity of the book in the same way. My only notable critique is that I think the decision to go with a possible tech transfer to North Korea as a key plot element was a mistake. The DPRK model is one with no appeal outside their borders; they offer neither freedom, nor growth, nor an appealing market for sales. I could see going with the PRC in the relevant role or an authoritarian ally of the U.S. Not every element of the North Korean plotline was bad; one dark chapter told a story coming out of the DPRK that definitely added to the book. But I think their involvement undermined the believability of the villains as it makes them not just evil but also quite foolish.

September 30, 2012

On my Google Reader feed, I’ve recently noted my agreement with voting for the Obama administration even if you have a variety of legitimate critiques against them on foreign policy militancy or war on drugs grounds.

Four quick reasons: the President has respected our status of forces agreement with Iraq and withdrawn from that nation, the President opposes waterboarding and Gov. Romney does not, the President is far less likely to launch and ill-advised strike against Iran, and on domestic policy grounds while Obamacare, which Gov. Romney has promised to gut, needs to go much further it is still the greatest advancement of the U.S. social safety net since the sixties. On top of this, I’d add that I am unaware of any civil rights issue on which the Republican candidate is better than the President.

Nonetheless, this should not to be taken as a statement of support for our drone bombing campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen. Similarly, I’d favor working out a status of forces agreement that could pass muster in the Afghan parliament, and if that means accelerating our withdrawal or reducing the amount we operate outside of bases before that withdrawal, so be it. Obviously, there are many on the left that are more vehement on these issues and I respect that. I’d encourage the American citizens among them them to vote for the President, eyes wide open, but I respect if they wish to criticize U.S. policies and withhold/retarget money/labor from campaigns as a means of applying pressure. The lesser of two evils argument just applies to voting, trying to use it to squash reasonable foreign policy criticisms is illiberal.

It appears that drone activity has declined in 2012, although that may be an artifact of the time it takes to gather data. Aside from the raw numbers, though, Glenn draws particular attention to this passage from the report:

The US practice of striking one area multiple times, and evidence that it has killed rescuers, makes both community members and humanitarian workers afraid or unwilling to assist injured victims. Some community members shy away from gathering in groups, including important tribal dispute-resolution bodies, out of fear that they may attract the attention of drone operators. Some parents choose to keep their children home, and children injured or traumatized by strikes have dropped out of school. Waziris told our researchers that the strikes have undermined cultural and religious practices related to burial, and made family members afraid to attend funerals.

…There's no question that fighting a counterinsurgency is hard. And it's fundamentally different from fighting a conventional war because it's difficult to separate militants from civilians — something that insurgents explicitly count on. But even if you accept drone strikes as a legitimate part of counterinsurgency, and even if you accept that civilian casualties are an inevitable part of that, "double tap" strikes are simply heinous. They're also far more likely to turn the indigenous population against you, which makes them counterproductive as well as immoral. After all, it's not as if top al-Qaeda leaders are the ones likely to be conducting rescue operations. At best, you might get a few foot soldiers but nothing more.

Again, the whole post is well worth reading and brings more data to bear (go to Greenwalt or the recent drone report for even more). So I support dropping the ‘double tap’ strike immediately and moving away from a war model. Obviously, the criminal justice model failed to prevent 9/11, but the best response there is to improve the model rather than adopt a military one. The initial military approach cost more American lives, let alone hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, than were lost to Al Qaeda. The drone war approach does have far fewer deaths associated with it than the occupation approach, but Osama Bin Laden is dead, al Qaeda is not the force it once was, and it’s time to end our wars. As Drum notes this is hardly a popular position, but it is not going to get more popular unless we talk about it.

July 01, 2012

The Surpreme Court decision on universal health care was a frightening near thing. Four justices voted to find the entire Affordable Care Act unconstitutional and appear to be preparing a judicial assault against the New Deal. Chief Justice Roberts decision stepped us back from the brink of a Supreme Court legitimacy crisis, a change made perhaps at the last minute, although still a decision that will complicate future efforts to improve national programs that are implemented through the states.

The battle now proceeds to the election. This will be a hard one, thanks to difficult worldwide conditions and successful obstructionism by Republicans in Congress since the beginning of the crisis, economic recovery is slow in coming. As Dan Drezner notes, the U.S. is performing above par internationally, but the average American voter doesn't grade on a curve. I have no special insight into how to win that election so instead I"ll look at the topic of how did we win this round?

To answer that question, I turn to Will Wilkerson, a libertarian with liberal sympathies, who seems scornful of the win in a way that strikes me as informative:

Mr Roberts observed the livid reaction to Citizens United, as well as the liberal freak-out over the mere possibility of a ruling striking down Obamacare, and determined that prudent custodianship of the court called for a light, conciliatory touch. Indeed, my hunch (and none shall doubt my amazing intuition!) is that Mr Roberts may well have chosen to join his conservative colleagues had the court not lost so much public goodwill following the Citizens United decision…

Thus, all that was required to avert a looming "crisis of legitimacy" was to uphold Obamacare, for whatever reason, and Mr Roberts seemed to have known it. Mr Chait and his partisan allies clearly dislike the way in which Mr Roberts avoided the "crisis" of their collective tantrum, but the great relief that has now washed over them will be enough to keep them from attacking with full force the "bizarre and implausibly narrow reading" of the commerce clause which Mr Roberts just embedded more firmly in constitutional law.

This is a tradeoff I will gladly take. Achieving universal healthcare is no mere battle in building a more humane, it is the war. As Kevin Drum argues, the distinction between activity and inactivity never came up before and is unlikely to come up again. The practical result is that we will have to call things taxes in the future, scary I know, but the present Democratic party aversion to ever using taxes is on any but the top 1% was already unsustainable. We may yet lose the election, but Roberts had the votes to end it here and now via what James Fallows called a slow motion coup and he choose not to. We are a better country for that and we are a better country because liberal politicians and pundits were taking Michael Tomasky's fine advice and preparing to come out swinging. As Wilkerson notes, this wasn't a one off preparation either, the vehement reaction against Citizens United may not be enough to overcome the effect of big money donors but it did better prepare us for this fight.

In some ways, this recalls the bully pulpit strategy of presidential leadership: appeal to the public to move popular opinion and pressure members of the legislature. Political science has not found support for that idea. However, in part because supporters are defending an existing law rather than trying to institute change via the court, vehement arguments seem to have helped win the day. I'll keep an eye out for any further research on this matter, as I expect the minority mentioned above will be back for future attempts to roll back the welfare state.

June 27, 2012

Half Revolution tells the story of a group of friends living near Tahrir Square at the start of the Egyptian Revolution. They all have strong ties to Egypt, although they do represent a mix of nationalities. The story they tell is an interesting one: they are quite supportive of the revolution and do go out into the streets; however, their role is unsurprisingly more that of the documentarian than the full-on revolutionary. This isn't to say that even though they eventually leave, they aren't taking real risks when they're out filming. One of the group is beaten by Mubarak's thugs and all of them become increasing fearful as the hardliners take the streets near them.

Note at the start that I do say it is the story of the friends, not the revolution. This isn't to say that they don't try to tell the story of the revolution; they get the reactions of people on the street and do get footage of the action. However, I think the cosmopolitan nature of the group of filmmakers works against them to an extent as the full story of the revolution ultimately belongs to those that couldn't leave. Similarly, while we got a variety of expressions from people on the street, we didn't get much in the way of interviews with key leaders or representative samples.

This not to knock the filmmakers. I think they had two choices: to go with a short film, perhaps less than a half hour, that just told the story of the revolution and relegated themselves to full observer status, or to tell their stories, which does add to what we know about what happened while also giving us characters to relate to a sense of the fear they were working under. Directors Omar Shargawi and Karim El Hakim have done Egypt a service in my view and may well represent the start of what I suspect will be a larger phenomenon of filmmakers with the necessary talent and skill to record events that they happen to be on scene for. Likely, future key events may even have multiple such filmmakers on hand, and they will have the option of working together to give an even wider lens to such key events.

Photos of Tahrir Square and the burned National Democratic Party headquarters by myself and my mother. Available under a creative commons license.

If you are charged with a crime in Japan and brought to trial, statistics show that there is a 99 percent chance that you will be convicted. This alarming statistic reveals the highly dysfunctional legal system from which the Ace Attorney series clearly takes its inspiration; a system where even a victim of false allegations finds it impossible to escape conviction. Phoenix Wright, the eponymous lawyer of the popular Capcom games, constantly battles seemingly impossible odds as he fights to defend his falsely accused clients. While the fantastical anime nature of the games gives rise to outlandish courtroom antics and bizarre scenarios, the core concept of a lopsided legal system weighted against the accused is an exaggerated parody of Japanese society and their courts.

In effect, the games have a presumption of guilt and a requirement for decisive proof of another's guilt to get a verdict of not guilty. To achieve that mighty task, the virtues praised most directly by the series are seeking truth and believing. The truth-seeking sometimes results in the prosecution and defense effectively teaming up to figure out what really happened. That outcome seems odd, but given the need to effectively prove someone else did it, the defense attorneys often effectively become prosecutors in their own right. Thus I'd say that in the first three games the prosecutors and police are parodied but idea that even the guilty deserve a competent defense isn't addressed.

However, I'd argue that Apollo Justice, the fourth game in the series, does the best job of the ones I've played at actually getting at the importance of legal council. In the second case, your client is an outright mobster who obnoxiously tries to establish his gangster cred with almost every thing he says. There's also a few points where a sympathetic character plays some sketchy hardball in a way that seeks the truth by a fairly twisty path. Finally, the last case involves a possible reform to the judicial system that would introduce juries who would not be bound by the decisive evidence standard. Now, in both cases, our hero is still first and foremost concerned with finding the truth rather than ensuring the client's defense. Nonetheless, I think this valuably adds to the picture in the prior three games which instead focused on problems of overreach, fraud, and by the police and prosecution.

Even though they do just scratch the surface, I think the games all should be commended for taking on a real issue. And to be clear, while our conviction rate is lower, some of the problems do apply in the U.S. as well. See Ta-Nehisi Coates on Texas "justice":

In 2000, an investigation by The Chicago Tribune found that almost one-third of court-appointed defense lawyers in capital cases in Texas had, at some point, been publicly sanctioned by the state’s trial board. The Tribune uncovered cases of lawyers falling asleep at trials, engaging in extortion and assaulting teenage girls. Prosecutors and police were found concealing evidence or worse. In 1980, Cesar Fierro received the death penalty on the strength of a confession secured after an El Paso sheriff colluded with police across the border in Juárez, Mexico, who arrested Fierro’s parents and threatened to attach an electric generator to his stepfather’s genitals. Fierro is still on death row.

"As the vote drew nearer, I wrestled with this issue in a way I never had before, which led me to realize that I had some concerns about the bill," said Arora, who is a co-sponsor of the legislation.

Arora said that he personally prefers civil unions as an alternative to allowing gay couples to marry but decided voters should have "a direct say."

"On the floor, I will vote to send the bill to the governor so that Marylanders can ultimately decide this issue at the polls," he said. "I think that is appropriate."

In recent days, Arora had pledged to vote for the bill in committee but left open the possibility he would oppose it on the floor. That brought a torrent of criticism on his Facebook page and through other means.

If we get this through, we totally need a party to celebrate. Although given current circumstances if I host it we may end up doing it a month or two late. So until that moment comes, I'd like to thank everyone that contacted their delegates, alerted their friends, and did their part to move this civil rights issue forward. We haven't won yet, and even if the bill passes there will be a state-wide vote, but we've already come a long way and I appreciate everything that you all have done.

February 25, 2011

Primary challenges are rare, and turnout in primaries is low. Those reasons, it seems to me, explain why primary system dynamics in practice have few consequences for political outcomes. I think the reform that anti-polarizers are looking for is multiple member House constituencies so that we’d have one or two Republicans from New York City, a smallish block of white southern Democrats, a conservative Mexican-American from Texas, etc. Then I think you might find that voting patterns became a bit less systematically correlated.

However, he misses something big. Multi-member alone doesn't do it, you also need a voting system that doesn't work off a simple plurality vote. As the thesis of Flores over at Fair Vote notes:

Simply put, multimember districts, even when fairly drawn, can still dilute minority voting strength. This is due to the fact that a bare plurality could potentially determine the gamut of Representatives for the region, gaining a disproportionate share of political power. Minorities may once again be left without representation, especially when their interests differ sharply from the majority. Therefore, multimember systems can be strikingly similar to at-large elections, as both share the same unsatisfactory sweep tendency.

In the past, Yglesias had correctly noted that single-transferable vote would do the job. The tranferable vote makes it safer to vote for your preferred candidate by transfering your vote to a second-best option if your ideal candidate loses in early rounds; similarly 'excess' votes for candidates elected in early rounds can be transferred. And here I will add a slight caveat to the title, single transferable vote isn't the only way to go proportional, it's just a solid proven method.

For a practical example, look at Maryland's House of Delegates, which elects candidates in three member districts. However, Maryland generally uses block voting which "is not a system for obtaining proportional representation; instead, the usual result is that the largest single group wins every seat by electing a slate of candidates, resulting in a landslide." Under a proportional system Maryland's House of Delegates would probably have more Republicans elected from the Democratic strongholds and I suspect we'd also see more realistic challenges to the Democratic party from the third parties to the left. [The third party element would add a wild card in terms of polarization, however since we're still talking about districts the system would still have a noteable cut off in terms of popular support needed to get more than a handful of seats unless they were organized on a regional basis. An actual Tea Partybased in the south east might happen, but in turn politicians like Indiana's Sen. Lugar would have an easier time of it in the rest of the country.]

February 10, 2011

Too soon to say on the details, but it does sound as if this would still be a transition within the ruling party. Vice President Omar "Egypt is not ready for Democracy" Suleiman is a likely successor. Whoever comes next, there will definitely be some policy shifts and concessions. Whether there's genuine reform will be trickier to guess but the sustained commitment shown by protestors does make me think that there's now an activist core that can be a source of continuing pressure.

July 17, 2009

In real time, we arrived home safely today. But for the purposes of this log, we’re back exploring Cork and western Ireland and grateful for the company and transportation provided by Kate’s friends.

Our first night in Cork was interrupted by someone, presumably a drunkard, pulling a fire alarm. We got back to sleep easily enough, but the 3:30 am wake up was not fun. Thankfully the day itself was much better. First stop was the Cork Gaol, an impressive stone facility that imprisoned people for largely poverty related crimes. It was also overstuffed during the Irish civil war. The design of the main chambers actually represented an improvement over the dank corridors of older facilities. However, the philosophy of the time emphasized silence and solitude which may help prevent recidivist training but on the other hand probably breaks many of the people punished under such a system. We close out the pictures with some overhead views of Cork.

If we ever manage to pull off prison reform in the States I suspect future generations may visit a new crop of jail museums spread throughout much of the U.S. The exhibits will probably point out the absurdities in our current system and we’ll be earnestly or snarkily knocked by the visitors. Sen. Webb has been doing some good work on these issues, here’s hoping we get these museums sooner rather than later.

Question for any commenters: Am I the only one that tends to actively try to plan escapes when visiting museum jails and the like? Does everyone do it?

This is very exciting -- as the New York Times' Erik Eckholm observes, "In a sharp break with Chinese Communist tradition, even for dismissed officials, Mr. Zhao provides personal details of tense party sessions." In other words, there's some good dirt here for China scholars.

2) Co-opt groups willing to eschew violence. This does necessitate talking to them but does not require giving them what they want. I think we might do better if we actually debated abortion rights rather than ‘judicial activism’ as the former is what people care about. At the same time, I think it is key to have those whose rights are most impacted to be directly involved in negotiation. That’s why I’m trying to eschew making compromise proposals, it isn’t my rights on the line.

4) Keep things in perspective. I haven’t been able to find the chart by Googling, but the Washington Post had a great chart that did show that incidences of clinic violence were going down on the whole. However, as noted above, the 1% of abortions that happen in the third trimester and have a notable bottleneck when it comes to providers. This vulnerability means that even a comparatively small violent campaign can be effective. The U.S. can mitigate but not eliminate the threat of violence and as a result so long as the bottleneck is so small there will always be a worry. Decreasing the intimidation short of violence levels will help, but I think a game changer might be needed. I have some thoughts on that issue, but I think that gets back into areas where I have no extra knowledge.

We will discover how Obama feels about Democracy promotion on June 4th when he will be making a speech from Cairo. Choosing Egypt to give his promised speech in the Muslim world dramatically escalates the stakes for the speech because Egypt, along with Saudi Arabia, symbolize U.S. thwarting of democracy in Arabic nations. Turkey or Indonesia, both democratic Muslim countries, would allowed some sidestepping of the issue as both governments could be legitimately praised. Neither country is Arabic, but at least it would showcase good relations with predominantly Muslim nations.

I really do not know how Obama is going to come down on this. His instincts are often realpolitik, albeit not constrained by the classical realist exclusive focus on the nation state. If he does not make a meaningful push for human rights in Egypt or reach out to the non-violent Muslim Brotherhood it would be a profound mistake but not a betrayal of campaign promises. Nonetheless, I actually rate this issue more important than the President’s positions on the torture pictures or even some sort of military commissions compromise. Hamas and Hezbollah are hard cases, but the Muslim Brotherhood is not. Our harbinger of change choose his venue, intentionally raised the stake, and anything short of a strong and Egypt specific message of democracy support will rightfully be seen as U.S. opposition to popular rule among our Gulf allies or more accurately put our frenemies.

May 14, 2009

The Republicans are trying some sort of odd defense that breaking the law doesn’t count if you tell opposite party politicians about it. The way rule of law works, you actually have to change the law, if you check the constitution, there’s not some sort of briefing exception. Regardless, here’s Dan Balz of the Post on the current controversy:

For the first time, Pelosi (D-Calif.) acknowledged that in 2003 she was informed by an aide that the CIA had told others in Congress that officials had used waterboarding during interrogations. But she insisted, contrary to CIA accounts, that she was not told about waterboarding during a September 2002 briefing by agency officials. Asked whether she was accusing the CIA of lying, she replied, "Yes, misleading the Congress of the United States…"

Instead of registering her protest to the administration, she said, she set out to help Democrats win control of Congress and elect a Democrat as president.

Basically the difference between 2002 and 2003 is the difference between asking for permission and presenting a fait accompli. Pelosi’s actions were no profile in courage and I certainly think it’s fair that she should say all she knew in front of a truth commission. However, once she did get power she has worked towards ending both torture and cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment as well as launching investigations of the lawbreaking. On this issue, she’s certainly been out in front of President Obama and for that I salute her. I actually got to see both her and Rahm Emmanuel at a fundraiser this Wednesday and even with these revelations I am still a fan. Why, because while I do think Pelosi is spinning, I think the CIA is engaging in a bald-faced lie. James Fallows helpfully explains:

It's easy! If the CIA says one thing and former Sen. [Bob] Graham says another, then the CIA is lying. Or, "in error," if you prefer.

(Background here and here, in which Graham says that some of the briefings in which he was allegedly filled in about waterboarding and related techniques never occurred. This matters, because the CIA's claims are part of the same argument that Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats in Congress had known about and acquiesced to waterboarding all the way along.

Part of the payoff of reaching age 72 and having spent 38 years in public office, as Graham has, is that people have had a chance to judge your reputation. Graham has a general reputation for honesty. In my eyes he has a specific reputation for very good judgment: he was one of a handful of Senators actually to read the full classified intelligence report about the "threats" posed by Saddam Hussein. On the basis of reading it, despite a career as a conservative/centrist Democrat, he voted against the war and fervently urged his colleagues to do the same. "Blood is going to be on your hands," he warned those who voted yes.

More relevant in this case, Graham also has a specific reputation for keeping detailed daily records of people he met and things they said. He's sometimes been mocked for this compulsive practice, but he's never been doubted about the completeness or accuracy of what he compiles…

This doesn't prove that the accounts of briefing Pelosi are also inaccurate. But it shifts the burden of proof.

I do fear that Ta-Nehisi Coates and Digby are right and the torture taboo is shattered. The Balz article above, like most in the media, is unwilling to call a spade a spade. But there is a chance here if the Speaker plays her cards right. I’d like to believe we have strong public support, but I don’t think that’s true. However, depending on what else is being lied about, the public might start to feel strongly about this. We should certainly not put all of our eggs in this basket, we have to look to the long game and in the short term work on a truth commission. In the likely event no one goes to trial now, we could still try them later. If we fail to get the information out now, then it will be all too easy for the torture clique to destroy more evidence.

May 07, 2009

I’ve long thought that the spread of same-sex marriage in America was being furthered by demographics. Aside from the more liberal attitudes among the young, each victory would bring same sex couples more into the spotlight and show how they were not a threat to society at all and would instead will help make up the bedrock.

Despite my optimism, I’ve been shocked by the speed of the recent string of victories. A judicial decision in Iowa followed by legislative implementation in Vermont and Maine. New Hampshire has passed a bill, although it is unclear whether the governor will sign it. Meanwhile, despite all the hand-wringing over African-American voting in California, the DC council decisively voted to recognize marriages from other states.

Kevin Drum makes an interesting observation about all this:

But I wonder if this is an example of how gay marriage opponents are going to end up losing this battle entirely when they could have won at least a partial victory if they'd been less strident in their opposition. If they had actively supported civil unions, that could have become the de facto standard across the country, accepted by courts and legislatures alike. But the ferocity of their opposition to any form of marriage equality might have been instrumental in convincing a lot of people like Baldacci that half measures are impossible. And if half measures are impossible, then full marriage rights are the only alternative.

So what’s next? The current pace is obviously unsustainable. Even so, things are going well enough that we’ll be listing Equality Maryland as a charitable alternative to our wedding registry. I had been afraid that Maryland was far enough off that it would be better to target resources elsewhere given the snowball effect. With this good news, I feel more confident in the local fight. To end on a happy local note, a few weeks ago that crazy Topeka hate group staged a protest outside of Walt Whitman High School. Apparently bigots aren’t Whitman fans. Regardless, they didn’t know who they were messing with:

May 03, 2009

What we need now is a public airing through congressional hearings and perhaps a high-level commission—Jack Goldsmith and Philip Zelikow, brave opponents of torture and legal casuistry inside the Bush administration, would be excellent choices for it. But pursuing criminal charges would be too hard legally and politically and too easy morally. Prosecuting Bush and his men won't absolve the rest of us for what we let them do.

First off, as I’ve often thought when hearing this sort of argument, what do you mean “we”, white man? More to the point there was certainly damage done to America’s reputation, but more to the point there are victims here, admittedly many of them nasty people. Beyond that, a violation of a treaty is a betrayal of all the abiding signatories. Weisburg and the like seem to be treating torture as the equivalent of neglecting our national gravesites or something else just about us.

If we are collective responsible, than what is the collective price we pay? I’m not a believer in collective punishment, but there are certainly people radicalized by torture that are. The answer American collective punishment advocates seem to argue for is basically that we should uncover the truth and feel guilty. In war time we’ve tended to take a far harsher line but in power politic conflict we’ve tend to give defeated adversaries a pass. I think not gloating or going for blood is often a wise move, but that’s in the context of a country that’s already paying a tough price.

Instead, advocates for the collective responsibility approach act as both sinner and forgiver. They dilute the guilt until it vanishes entirely and then order us to go and sin no more. The investigation will provide a hand basin for a collective washing our hands of this unpleasantness.

Of course, the torture advocates are still arguing torture, so that sort of throws a crimp in the plan. But what are the odds that in a two party system, the other party will win again?

May 01, 2009

Rosen and Weissman were charged in 2005 with conspiring to obtain classified information and pass it to journalists and the Israeli government. They were the first non-government civilians charged under the 1917 espionage statute with verbally receiving and transmitting national defense information.

Some lawyers and First Amendment advocates have said the case would criminalize the type of information exchange that is common among journalists, lobbyists and think-tank analysts.

As a note of disclosure, I am a think-tank analyst, but I’ve never dealt with classified information. Closest I’ve come is For Official Use Only (FOUO) material and business sensitive stuff. I think on the whole I’m happier that way. Regardless, these guys didn’t have clearances and if you’re doing normal espionage you don’t pass it on to journalists. Moreover, I think journalists should at times receive go digging for classified information because some things are declared secret because their embarrassing.

In other good news, the Obama administration lost a ruling where they were attempting to invoke the states secret doctrine. In essence, they were continuing a Bush era policy of rejecting suits because they would involve disclosure of classified information. I do think that certain information shouldn’t come out to the public in lawsuits, but there’s ways to protect secrets without deny the judicial branch a chance to review the case.

The basic logic here is straightforward. American elected leaders and their appointees have the right to be wrong, to break the law when we’re frightened. Richard Cohen made this argument explicitly, albeit in a manner completely lacking in self-awareness. Those who favor unaccountability often also praise the pardoning of Nixon who clearly stated his claim that if the President does it, it’s not illegal. The fact that these measures violate international law is probably not even a secondary consideration here, after all, who is going to make us face accountability? Spain isn’t really powerful enough to do more than keep people out of Europe . None of this is especially surprising and I suspect that despite the extraordinary nature of 9/11 the principle of the executive accountable only to the electorate isn’t going to go away.

All in all, I pray we can win the fight on torture, but I do not believe that the self-correcting measures on American hegemony can prevent future disastrous mistakes. A few months ago I attended a great talk by Spencer Ackerman that essentially argued that the tools of military dominance inevitably corrupt and that unless we’re willing to put some of those tools down the cycle will keep repeating itself. I have no problem with American military superiority, but I think liberals will better spend their energy directing resources away from supremacy than in trying to direct the tools of military supremacy to the greater good of the world. If torture is giving our elites this much trouble, how are we going to manage the tougher calls?

April 25, 2009

The question that Congress might ponder, but won't, is whether the structure of our foreign policy apparatus - the power and responsibility vested in a secret branch of government -- invites abuse. That was the position of the late Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan who argued for abolishing the CIA. He didn't want to eliminate intelligence, but he wanted to return it to the purview of the State Department, while giving the armed forces the responsibility for overseas intervention.

I'm not saying I favor this, but it's certainly worth discussing. One need only consider George Tenet's reign as CIA chief. Tenet came in with a reform portfolio; and he initially did well as a manager; but by the time he had been forced out of office, the CIA itself had committed more war crimes, and bollixed more critical intelligence inquiries than ever before. Was that because Tenet was deeply incompetent? Or was there something about the agency's structure in government that invited presidents to twist it for their own sordid political ends? Could the armed services have as easily complied with these torture memos? I think not.

I’m not really sure of the best arrangement of the analysis side of intelligence gathering. I do suspect that constantly rearranging the organization charts is probably undermining the potential benefits of improvements. However, I do feel that when you go from spying to strike forces and holding prisoners, it’s better to use the military? Is that because the military is somehow immune to abuse? No, certainly not.

Instead I think the switchover could be worth while because the military has more protections built in as well as the Uniform Code of [Military] Justice. I’ve heard of more official objections coming out of the military than the CIA. High ranking military officers tend to escape judgment, but I think that on the CIA side there tends to be no accountability whatsoever. I’m not sure I can say what the exact dividing line should be, but if it’s the kind of thing happening in the final third of a James Bond film, it would probably be better handled by the military.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t good people working at the CIA, there were those that resigned during the Bush years and in past accounts of debacles there are a fair number of agents that wanted to do right. However, organizations with more institutional protections make it easier to do the right thing. This isn’t to say it isn’t possible to design a civilian operations agency with such protections, but we haven’t pulled it off yet. This is probably an area where comparisons with other nations intelligence services may help. But on the whole, my instinct is that if the current and previous four directors of a government institution want to cover up torture, than it’s time to reassign powers and then salt the ground on which the old corruption was built.

April 24, 2009

It’s shocking how easy it is to be shocked all over again by
browsing through Jay Bybee’s memo. For example: “These procedures, as
discussed above, involve the use of muscle fatigue to encourage
cooperation and do not themselves constitute the infliction of severe
physical pain or suffering.”

It’s not pain, it’s just muscle fatigue. And it’s not severe. It’s just bad enough to compel you to cooperate.

For those torture apologist that don't think that the President can order anything, the guiding idea seems to be that the problem with traditional torture is that it is inefficient in terms of pain suffered and damage done. Thus it becomes a twisted version of a medical problem. How can you break someone while not causing irreversible physical harm or pain above a certain magnitude. They don't seem to get that breaking someone's spirit is inherently problematic. As I understand it, more effective techniques involve time, gaining trust, and of course some level of psychological manipulation. Coercive techniques basically rely on the victim being willing to tell you anything to get you to stop. And since they'll tell you anything, you'll get a lot of bad intel that you want to believe since they're saying what you want to hear.

Also as a quick clarification on my prior post. Torture is illegal under domestic U.S. law whereas the Supreme Court, and not just an executive branch lawyer has upheld the legality of abortion and the death penalty. At the same time, torture is illegal under international law. That would provide an alternate basis for prosecution. However, there's no relevant treaties that we've signed on to (there might be something out there on the juvenile death penalty). So the situation that Saletan describes wouldn't come up under either domestic or international law. [Update: One possible exception, there was a big fight over the executions of Mexican nationals that didn't get to contact their embassy. That wasn't specifically about the death penalty, but was relevant to international law. However, that's about due process and not outcomes.]

April 16, 2009

"[Former Attorney General Alberto] Gonzales, Federal Appeals Court Judge and former Assistant Attorney General Jay Bybee, University of California law professor and former Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, former Defense Department general counsel and current Chevron lawyer William J. Haynes II, Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff David Addington, and former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith"

That quote from the Daily Beast describing the proceeding indictments in Spain (Via Yglesias). Judge Garzon, who had indicted Pinochet, will be asked by prosecutors to recuse himself due to past involvement with the case. That seems appropriate, it makes all the more clear that this isn't about a single figure in Spain but has the backing of the Spanish justice system at large. The six above are being indicted for their involvment with the toture of Spanish citizens. Torture violates customary international law in addition to treaties the U.S. has ratified, so Spain is an odd place for the indictments but they have jurisdiction. As a key side note, the Geneva conventions ban not just torture but cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment. The later catches many of the the more borderline methods.

The Obama administration today released the rest of the torture memos authored by Bybee, his replacement Bradbury, and the CIA legal counsel Rizzo (rundown via Ackerman). Yoo had also written memos, but his aren't the four that people are mainly talking about. Ackerman has letters written by the administration to the intelligence community. The President has said that we will not prosecute those that followed the twisted legal guidence. My instinct would be to condition that amnesty on accurate testimony, but I can accept that. Director of National Intelligence Blair asks that we treat the interogators with respect. That I will not do. Those that directly abused prisoners should have known better and their lives and families were not in danger if they rejected those orders. Many a villain throughout history has believed they acted in the best interest of their nation. I don't doubt that the Japanese soldiers convicted for waterboarding Americans, or Americans convicted of that crime in the past believed that as well. I do believe in forgiveness, but it should be preceded by atonement.

April 11, 2009

I took an AI class back in undergrad, more than seven years ago now. We never really discussed ethics, but that's in large part because the field wasn't far enough along. The trouble is, there may not be that bright a line for when we are. When an AI can impersonate a human conversationally, passing the Turing test, it will still probably be via the use of a range of heuristics and trickery. However, the human brain also uses such short cuts. It seems to me distinctly possible that we still will have highly limited understanding of human consciousness by the time we start to get to real AI. Without that understanding it will be difficult to say what qualifies as consciousness via software.

Hans Moravec, a robotics specialist at Carnegie Mellon, speculates that a computer would have to be able to compute 100 trillion instructions per second to emulate the human brain. That means that to perform like a human brain a “futuristic” PC would have to be 1,000 times more powerful than the average PC produced in 2008. This bridge between current computer power and that needed in the future may seem large. But, keep in mind that computational power doubled each year in the 1990s. Experts believe the doubling of processing speed every year will continue to grow exponentially well into the next decade.

Living in a world where computers are as smart as and can learn as quickly as humans will change the way people live. According to Moravec, the rise of robots will lead to a “fundamental restructuring of our society” (sounds like our friend Ray Kurzweil, no?). Business practices, scientific advances, and even athletic competitions could all be held without people. Based on the articles, it appears as though human-like robots are truly right around the corner. Whether people in society will be willing to accommodate their integration is another issue.

How to prepare? It seems to that one logical starting point would be to set a few easy to judge threshholds. One would be any algorithm that has passed the Turing test or any modification on such an algorithm. Another could be any learning software on a hardware platform sufficiently powerful to perform 100 trillion instructuions per second and thus emulate the human brain. I don't think such research should be banned, but once those threshhols are hit the designers and programmers should start talking to human subject review boards and bring in all the processes and protections relevant to human experimentation. I'm not knowlegable or wise enough to suggest what boundaries these boards should lay down, but I feel that such protections should come in at the front end of true AI and not as an afterthought.

April 09, 2009

Subsequently, I came across the Humane Farm Animal Care certification on some eggs in my local Harris-Teeter. The Humane Farm certification is given to products from farms that ensure a "nutritious diet without antibiotics, or hormones, animals raised with shelter, resting areas, sufficient space and the ability to engage in natural behaviors." More information here. They're careful to say that "humane" is not the same thing as "cage free" or "organic," terms that I think have gotten mixed up with humane practices in the consumers mind. Moreover, the more of a market there is for these products, the cheaper they'll become, which will in turn grow the market, which will again make the products cheaper, and so forth. You've seen this with organics (though there've also been considerable efforts to cut corners).

Cage-free doesn't mean relatively humane? Sigh. They were mixed up in this consumer's mind. I put rather little weight on organic, but guess I'll have to update what certifications I look for. Some of them also claim to be cruelty-free. I wonder if that's a meaningful standard.

March 29, 2009

For a long stretch of the late Bush years I wondered if Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzón, famous for his prosecution of Pinochet and other efforts to assert universal jurisdiction over international human rights law, would put the Bush administration in his sights. And now it seems he has: “The officials include former attorney general Alberto Gonzales, former undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith, former Cheney chief of staff David Addington, Justice Department officials John Yoo and Jay S. Bybee, and Pentagon lawyer William Haynes.”

I don’t actually know Bybee or Haynes that well. I wasn’t aware that Feith was that involved with detainee treatment rather than ginning up a war, but I can’t say that it would surprise me. Garzón’s issuing a warrant wouldn’t actually get them sent to his court, but would get the gears of justice slowly turning.

Peter Finn and Jody Warrick a great article in the Post whose headline speaks for itself: detainee’s harsh treatment foiled no plots. The whole thing on Abu Zubaida, who we alleged was a chief of operations for Al Qaeda, is worth reading, but I’d highlight this passage:

Abu Zubaida quickly told U.S. interrogators of Mohammed and of others he knew to be in al-Qaeda, and he revealed the plans of the low-level operatives who fled Afghanistan with him. Some were intent on returning to target American forces with bombs; others wanted to strike on American soil again, according to military documents and law enforcement sources.

Such intelligence was significant but not blockbuster material. Frustrated, the Bush administration ratcheted up the pressure -- for the first time approving the use of increasingly harsh interrogations, including waterboarding.

In short, we got all we could get via conventional methods. The return on investment for selling our soul was nothing.

There are some signs that religious Americans have become more
tolerant of those who hold different religious views. But by no means
has religious intolerance faded away.

That’s the conclusion of a new report by James Gibson, based on a
national survey he conducted in 2007. (For an extended overview of the
results, click here.)
In brief, based on survey respondents’ answers to a series of
questions, Gibson created an index of “religious traditionalism,” some
defining characteristics of which are frequent attendance at religious
services and belief in God and the devil. The respondents were also
asked about their willingness to deny one or more political rights
(e.g., to give speeches, hold demonstrations, and run for public
office) to atheists...

Gibson speculates that the link between religious traditionalism and
political intolerance may “become more serious for American politics in
the future,” not less so... "Future research should therefore focus on methods by which all
citizens — religionists included — can be persuaded to value tolerance
more highly.”

Absent changing the mind of religious traditionalists, I think Gibson's speculation was confirmed by a recent survey. 15% (up from 8% in 1990) of the population now says they have no religion meanwhile the rising numbers calling themselves born again or evangelical might indicate a rise in those hewing towards religious conservatism. I don't think most of those holding no religion will mirror the desire to restrict the organization rights of the religious, although that would be an interesting study to see. Even if it isn't mirrored, I think Douthat is right to suggest that the survey indicates that the culture war is likely to get hotter in the near future.

However, what I really would like to see is this study done for ideology the restrictions that fanatics are willing to put on athiests, "to give speeches, hold demonstrations, and run for public
office," have been deployed against political groups before. In America that sort of thing has been done to socialists, let alone communists. Of course in Germany, such rules are presently employed against neo-Nazis. Their reasons are understandable but doing exluding anyone from participation, rather than vehemently out-competing them, runs against liberal pluralistic ideals. Not saying Germany is necessarily wrong here, just that I think the burden of proof for that sort of policy should be very high.

I wonder whether ideologues feel this as strongly as religious traditionalists. I wonder which systems of belief are most prone to it. Is it consisitently mirrored or does it sometimes hold on only one side? This issue is truly vital in young democracies but I don't think it's fully understood even in the developed world.

March 10, 2009

Elections are a necessary but not sufficient component of democracy. It's widely, and correctly, said that U.S. policy sometimes forgets this. I'll be attending an event tomorrow on Democracy Support and will write up the results, but I had a thought after attending a preview.

That said, I'm more of a booster for electoral, or thin, democracy than the average international relation type. My reason is that the most controversial part of democratization from the U.S. perspective is that some times the 'wrong' people win. Most common recent example is Hamas. Time and again there's a corrupt government in power and a popular radical group out of power and we think the solution is to reform the corrupt government or, to paraphrase a Quiet American, to create a third force. This approach fails time and time again when the opponents are not marginal?

The virtue of thin democracy is that it forces the issue. The power structure of a government will be reworked in to roughly mirror the preferences of the population. This is no panacea, I'm not a fan of Hamas, but addressing the concerns that drive them is a necessary step.

I think what I may have been missing in my support for thin democracy is that there are other ways to work on incorporating the outside group. Mitchell used a whole range of tools as part of the Good Friday process that included regularly booting Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, out of the process. These tools may be substantial better than elections for resolving the conflict. However, ultimately longstanding popular movements must be co-opted. Discrediting the movement can be part of that process, but it's much harder when they're out of power.

Photograph of Palestinian Election posters by pharaoh.berger used under a creative commons license.

March 08, 2009

Apparently Sen. Feinstein is stepping up to the plate on investigations. That means the intelligence committee head is joining with Sen. Leahy, who chairs judiciary, to call for probes.

Here’s a quote from one of the complainers:

By second-guessing the staffers now, warn the Agency veterans, Feinstein's investigation will have a "chilling effect on people who are asked to do risky things for this administration," says a former senior CIA official.

Really, you mean that enforcing the law means people will be less likely to break the law in the future? That sounds like it might set some sort of dangerous precedent leading to a nightmare ‘rule of law’ scenario. Similarly, I’m not finding the “they were briefed” excuse all that compelling. Last time I checked, the Geneva Conventions didn’t contain an exceptions for Congressional briefings. Funny how the CIA destroyed 92 interrogations videotapes. It’s almost as if they felt they had something to hide.

That said, I will certainly give them this point:

Staffers at the CIA will wonder why they are being singled out for investigation for executing the Bush Administration's policies, "while whose who made those policies are busy writing their memoirs," says Paul Pillar, who was the agency's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000-05, and now teaches at Georgetown University.

Generally speaking, I’ve got no problem giving these people amnesty if they testify under oath about what they did and who gave what orders. Accountability should rest with the decision makers. I similarly have no complaints if they want to reveal who in Congress was told what. Only fair really.

February 13, 2009

The U.S. is presently continuing to blackmail the U.K. by threatening to withhold intelligence information if they reveal details on how we tortured one of their citizens, Binyam Mohammed.

Details of how the “terrorist” detainee was allegedly tortured — and what UK intelligence services knew about it — must remain secret because of the American threats, the High Court ruled yesterday.

Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Lloyd Jones said lawyers for the Foreign Secretary had told them that the threat by the US still applied under President Obama. Oppostion MPs accused the Government of giving in to blackmail.

The disclosure that the US has threatened to re-evaluate sharing intelligence with Britain came only 24 hours after Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, lavished praise on the special relationship between the two countries.

But that’s not the only problem, the government is still claiming the State Secret doctrine to protect us against Binyam Mohammed’s lawsuit against Boeing for participating in his CIA rendering. David Luban over at Balkinazation makes the solid point that if you cover it up, you own it and rightly dismisses the idea that anything that embarrasses the government should be a state secret.

But implicitly supporting people who would take a razor to man's genitals, is, by the lights of Obama's own campaign rhetoric, disgraceful. Andrew thinks we should slow down, given that we don't know how it all will shake out. I think there may be something to that. But I also think there's something to raising the volume, to making it sure this doesn't slip through the cracks while the country is focused on the [economy].

Certainly, it's a way of thinking about your adversary that's at least somewhat in tension with the kind of thinking liberals prefer on foreign policy. On foreign policy, liberals like to understand that our adversaries' thinking can't simply be defined as the negation of our own values. (I agree, which is why I'm a liberal, albeit a moderate one on foreign policy.) It's fatuous to think that if we believe in freedom, then Islamic radicals must simply hate us for our freedom, or that if we believe in equal rights, then social conservatives must be motivated by a hatred for equal rights. Moreover, our adversaries are not always monolithic, and there are times when concessions can divide or isolate them from the center, not just encourage them to increase their demands.

I think Chait’s summary of how domestic and foreign policy strategy are similar in this regard is accurate. That said, the pieces he wasresponding to were more strategic than the excerpt he cited. So, is there strategic analysis correct? Well, coming from the other side, here’s Ross Douthat’s read:

If you're an unconflicted supporter of abortion rights, obviously, then you shouldn't support overturning [Roe vs. Wade], period: If second-trimester abortion is really a fundamental human right, then there's no reason to risk it's availability for some nebulous hope of a less polarized America

So, is a lot of the rhetoric about social conservatives hyperbolic? Sure. But that’s true of most any set of rhetoric when you’re dealing with an issue you actually care about. I think Chait may well be right in that liberals should do a better job of practicing what we preach when it comes to domestic strategy. That said, Obama’s outreach attempts to the House Republicans on stimulus netted him zero votes, so I don’t think this is a problem our leadership suffers from.

To have a meaningful debate, I think Chait needs to throw out an example where liberal strategic logic is flawed rather than one where the rhetoric is overheated. On this issue, positions don’t flow from your assumptions on human nature, they flow from how strongly you care about abortion rights and how broadly you define them.

In his ruling, the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, said a delay in Nashiri's arraignment would deny the public's interest in a speedy trial. He also said nothing that took place at the arraignment would prevent the Obama administration from deciding to deal with Nashiri in a forum other than the military commission now set to hear his case.

I suspect the judge’s decision is wrong on the law. That said, I’m sure the President can find a way to legally contest this decision so I’m not especially bothered by the judge’s action. More obnoxious are comments by the former commander of the Cole. Matt Yglesias retorts retired Cmdr. Kurt Lippold’s idea that we should ignore human rights and legal advocacy groups:

I am one who believes that international relations should be largely understood through the lens of interests. But there’s still such a thing as right and wrong. And we should, in fact, make adequate respect for the law and for human rights an important priority when making our policy decisions. Over the long run, Americans will much prefer to live in a world governed by law and human rights than one of chaos and brutality. And other countries will be better-disposed to our national power and leading global role insofar as they see us upholding humane values and basic decency.

It’s also worth noting that the USS Cole was a military ship, and thus a legitimate target. It was a suicide bombing, via boat, but the problem with such bombings isn’t the suicide. The problem with most suicide bombings is that they hit civilian targets. Yes, Kamikaze tactics are disturbing. But to throw out a cultural example I don’t recall too many people complaining about the end of Independence Day for that reason.

That said killing 17 sailors is still an act of war and can be fairly treated as such. Replying with military means is certainly legit. Alternately, since it was done by a non-state actor, you could treat it as a criminal act. Either way it’s just bizarre that the one guy still facing military tribunals designed (badly) for terrorists isn’t even accused of targeting civilians.

January 28, 2009

The Obama administration hasn’t shown much interest in prosecuting those members of the Bush administration that committed war crimes. Even so, Republicans in the Senate are delaying Eric Holder’s nomination for Attorney General until they get absolute assurance of that. Spencer Ackerman found that Sen. Kit Bond (R-Missouri) is claiming that Holder privately assured him that there will be no prosecutions. Happily, Holder’s aide is denying that claim. I’m not really too concerned with which one is lying, a private verbal promise publicly denied can easily be broken.

Prosecutorial and investigative judgments must depend on the facts, and no one is above the law. But where it is clear that a government agent has acted in "reasonable and good-faith reliance on Justice Department legal opinions" authoritatively permitting his conduct, I would find it difficult to justify commencing a full-blown criminal investigation, let alone a prosecution.

I think investigations, not necessarily criminal ones, are key for the agents. That said, prosecutions should focus on the higher ranking officials absent behavior so egregious it violates the legal standard Holder mentions. Practically speaking, I think we should probably be willing to trade amnesty for accurate testimony. I don’t think many of the key perpetrators would take that deal, which would leave them open to later prosecutions when political will was there. I expect most of the heavy lifting will be done at the behest of Speaker Pelosi. She’s our best hope at this point for American-based justice.

January 05, 2009

A fairly surprising choice as he lacks intelligence experience, but perhaps a good one. As a former chief of staff for President Clinton, he does have ample administrative experience. Critically, Ezra Klein notes that Panetta strongly opposes torture and did so explicitly in Washington Monthly last August.

The simple answer is the rule of law...We cannot simply suspend these beliefs in the name of national security. Those who support torture may believe that we can abuse captives in certain select circumstances and still be true to our values. But that is a false compromise. We either believe in the dignity of the individual, the rule of law, and the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment, or we don't. There is no middle ground.

We cannot and we must not use torture under any circumstances. We are better than that.